Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain spoke in the Senate this morning and called a concern about a domestic killing of a non-combatant [one not engaged in an act of expressing imminent force] in the war on terror, whether by drone or other means, an offensive question that cheapens the debate.\u00a0 They said that any President at any time in the future who ordered such a killing would be guilty of murder and would be tried for such an act.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, many executive branch agencies, engaged in an international war on terror, collect extensive dossiers on people throughout the world, including American citizens, in an attempt to stay out in front of and head off future terrorist acts.\u00a0 In some international theaters of war preemptive drone strikes have been used to kill those targets, presumably on probable cause conclusions enabled by military and other executive branch data collection.<\/p>\n
The question of jurisdiction that Senator Paul and others raised yesterday is entirely relevant.\u00a0 We have an overlay of a war-fighting capacity, from information gathering to summary execution, that persists as targets travel throughout the world.\u00a0 Presumably some of those targets have or may travel into and out of the United States.<\/p>\n
Moreover, persistent data collection about future potential targets while inside the U.S. puts both the 4th and 5th Amendments squarely on the table.\u00a0 Graham and McCain cannot simply waive off those analyses as unnecessary.\u00a0 Constitutional questions are well within the purview of the Senate and of Congress.\u00a0 Why would Senators Graham and McCain try to avoid even asking the questions?\u00a0 Aren’t such issues at the heart of the reason they hold those jobs?<\/p>\n
The war doesn’t stop at the U.S. border, but the methods for prosecuting it do change at the border.\u00a0 For enemy combatants who have, by federal statute, constructively abrogated their U.S. citizenship, constitutional protections turn on at the border, and turn off once they leave the country.<\/p>\n
Senators Graham and McCain may be correct to reduce this matter to a simple criminal law murder question, but it would be naive for the other branches of government to turn a blind eye to massive war fighting and law enforcement agencies while they temporarily suspend the prosecution aspect of their operations while hovering over American soil.<\/p>\n
Similarly, when you connect the dots of the vigorous citizen gun suppression campaigns currently underway in numerous states and at the federal level, with reports that domestic drones are being outfitted with sensors to identify U.S. citizens carrying a gun, and with reports of massive Homeland Security purchases of armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition, Senator Paul’s line of inquiry is not at all naive.<\/p>\n
I don’t distrust the intentions behind the federal forces tasked to protect us in this war.\u00a0 It’s the unintended consequences that will end up hurting us.<\/p>\n
B_Imperial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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